In recent years, the pet food aisles of grocery stores and specialty chains have seen an influx of brands made with so-called “human-grade” ingredients. But those high-end options could carry a high price for the environment—and they aren’t necessarily what Fido or Fluffy needs.

Pet foods made with byproducts are more sustainable than those made purely from human-grade ingredients; they use animal parts that might otherwise be dumped in landfills, where they could emit tons of carbon dioxide and methane.

Pet food carrying a “human-grade” label won’t necessarily give your pet the nourishment it needs. What really matters in pet food is not the grade of the ingredients, but the balance of nutrients it contains.

I disagree. What really matters in pet food IS the grade of ingredients and the balance of nutrients. Dead livestock – non-slaughtered animals are used in pet food and they should not be (per law and for health reasons). Dead livestock are full of dangerous bacteria, when that material is cooked – dangerous levels of endotoxins are released which can quickly sicken or kill a pet.

Yes, there are many parts of a healthy, slaughtered, USDA inspected and approved animal that are not used for human consumption and those materials are and should be used in pet food. But only those parts.

Our pets should not be living landfills for industry waste. Pets should not be consuming pet foods made with dead/diseased livestock. That is not a sustainability option.

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Comments 31

I’m shocked that an organisation dedicated to helping animals can be so ill-informed and blind to the danger of non-slaughtered animals, aflotxins, endotoxins, and many other problems of the industry today. Just speechless. Any ideas on why or how they arrived at all this misinfo?

World Wildlife Fund is notorious for conning animal lovers out of money, in hopes of helping protect wildlife. In reality, WWF supports trophy hunting and stands for “hunter’s rights”…because it’s GOOD for animals to be killed. Bottom line: WWF COULDN’T CARE LESS ABOUT ANY ANIMAL; they only care for your money 🙁

“The organization, founded in 1961 by a group of wealthy trophy hunters, apparently believes that conserving animals means keeping them around long enough for well-heeled “sportsmen” to blast them..”http://www.wickedwildlifefund.com/abuse.html

““WWF would not openly be supporting the sustainable use of wildlife for the hunting industry as a method for conservation if it did not work.”

I regret that I cannot agree with this. I am not saying this as a knee jerk, emotional reaction. I have been keeping an eye on the hunting industry for some years now and I’m afraid there is no way I can continue to support an organisation that supports hunting for any reason other than ‘survival’. ”http://www.nikela.org/open-letter-world-wildlife-fund-sport-hunting/

My own take on WWF and their support of “sustainable” trophy hunting is that lions, tigers and elephants are on the brink of extinction; NOT my idea of sustainable.
When WWF writes about pet food, I pay as much attention as I would to Hitler writing about Jews.

There is so much misinformation out there that is put out by vets and the pet food industry! Here we are allowed to raise hunan beings with little information from anyone but we are led to believe that we must have the multimillion dollar pet food industry in order to feed our pets!
I recently saw a closeup photo of a Beaver kept in a zoo. His teeth were rotting out of his mouth! That is something that would never happen if he was eating his natural diet!

This is simply infuriating! Our beloved furred family members are not garbage disposal units!! And you are spot on, Susan. There are many parts of animals which are not popular with humans. Clearly they know nothing about a raw diet, for example, because organs and bones are regular components of them — and those are not a regular part of most people’s diets. Clearly they did little research. I hope you will respond to them because they desperately need to be enlightened!! ALL animals deserve clean, healthy food and water — and that pretty much leaves out a large portion of what is sold to unwary consumers in the marketplace under the label “pet food”.

If you kept up with the pet food industry publications you would know that this is the latest industry gimmick: “greenwashing.” We’re supposed to be happy to see industrial waste of all kinds processed into petfood rather than taking up precious space in landfills. This is a deliberate strategy, and is designed to shame consumers into accepting worthless junk pet food by touting the “environmental costs” of feeding higher quality ingredients to pets. In truth, we SHOULD be concerned about the scale of meat eating that seems to require hideous CAFO operations and results in a lot of waste. But the solution is NOT to feed our pets crap, but to eat less meat ourselves, of higher quality (pasture raised) and demand decent food for our pets, too. They ARE carnivores — we are omnivores, and while good quality animal protein belongs in our diets, we overconsume the poor stuff that comes from factory farms, which are destroying the planet.

I too am shicked that this animal organization shoild be so purposely callus our companion animals and their health. There are other ways to take care of our environment, perhaps people should eat more vegetarian meals since we can be healthier living on properly planned plant based diets, whereas our dogs and cats need healthy sources of animal proteins, not feathers!

Shame – shame on WWF.org for spreading FALSE and harmful information. If they can’t bother to get their facts straight they shouldn’t be posting ANY articles or comments on this subject. I received emails from them briefly, after Cecile the Lion was tortured and killed. At the time they were sending information about African wildlife. Eventually almost all their emails became suspicious requests for DONATIONS at which point I blocked them. Organizations such as this one are obviously NOT TRUSTWORTHY. Perhaps they’ve received BIG DONATIONS from the BIG pet food industry to spread misinformation! I hope they get negative back lash from this! Susan – will you be contact them to complain? They should be held accountable.

Before trouncing WWF, I think it would be interesting to hear how they define “by-products”. Comments here have jumped to the conclusion that it means only the worst possible version of what is allowed – diseased tissue and dead animals. If, however, WWF is under the assumption that by-products are feet, lungs, testicles, penises, bruised meat that is unaesthetic and other animal parts that are not general used for human consumption and have been taken from healthy slaughtered animals, then they are making a valid point. Why shouldn’t those be allowed in pet food? Wolves would consume those parts; even domestic cats leave little behind when they kill a bird or rodent. Dehydrated feet, penises & lungs are being sold as gourmet dog treats and by reputable companies who source appropriately such as Bravo.

By-products can come from healthy animals that died by slaughter. They can also come from diseased and dead ones. That is where I have a problem with the use of by-products. Until AAFCO, et. al. disallow not only non-slaughtered poultry or meat but also diseased tissue such as tumors in pet food, the source of by-products is suspect. Unfortunately banning all by-products results in the exclusion of the acceptable by-products.

I haven’t read the entire post yet to see if there is context but as quoted, WWF’s statement is overly broad and simplifies the larger problems of pet food quality. The biggest offense is that a huge environmental organization just gave credibility to the critics of reforming not just pet food, but livestock husbandry in general. This is something that often happens when single issue organizations can’t step back and see how their issues fit into a much larger world.

I am not affiliated with Pet Food Sustainability Working Group, though I assume this organization worked out a ‘marketing partnership’ with WWF. As a pet food consumer advocate, I can share with you that your recent post regarding pet food sustainability is wrong and very misleading to pet food consumers.

Your post stated “What really matters in pet food is not the grade of the ingredients, but the balance of nutrients it contains.” Is WWF aware that diseased animal tissues, dead livestock, ground alive poultry (spent laying hens) are common pet food ingredients? As these types of ingredients are welcome in pet food – quality/grade of ingredients most certainly matters.

The sad truth that Pet Food Sustainability Working Group did not share with you, is that worldwide pets have become living landfills to waste that no animal should be fed. There is a huge difference between healthy slaughtered animal by-products and 4D waste material used as by-products. WWF should be better informed of the realities of the pet food industry BEFORE publishing a story that is promoting the horrendous waste material fed to pets.

I would be more than willing to speak with your organization and provide ‘truth’ to you on the realities of what actually is included in many pet foods. Sustainability is one thing, supporting the plan for pets to be living landfills for inedible/adulterated waste is something completely different. Pet food consumers deserve a retraction from WWF – we await your response.

Pet food IS about quality of ingredients BUT that is not the only issue! Even the best quality ingredients when exposed to high temperatures multiple times during processing as kibble and caned foods are lose a great deal of nutritional value. The ingredients of kibble are exposed to such extreme heats during multiple heat cycles that there is really little nutrition value. This is why you always see the mile long list of synthetic vitamins tacked on the ingredient lists.
Any nutritionist will tell you that highly processed foods have little nutritional value and that the body secretes more synthetic vitamins than it can assimilate.
It is incredible to me that pet food companies can get away with selling such garbage but it is just another example of how controlled and in many cases useless US media is.

The WWF is a product of the British Empire, it’s the most powerful and lavishly funded of the enviro-eugenics organizations, it was founded by Prince Phillips and Dutch Prince Bernhard, an unreconstructed Hitler Nazi SS member. The point of creating the WWF was to force a major cultural paradigm shift, away from the notion of human progress, backwards to a dark age concept of man as the “enemy” of nature (Malthusian). This ties into the British Empire’s “Global Warming” lies (launched in 1985), where eugenics was renamed “Ecology’.

WWF will get no more support from me. They have no idea of what they are talking about when it comes to pet food and, if they think it’s fine to eat by-products, they should dive right in and eat it themselves.

If you are aware of the expression, garbage in, garbage out, what they are really doing is off loading the cost of disposing of their wastes to the municipalities who then have to deal with the excess feces composed of the inedible, not nutritious waste that is being fed to our livestock and pets. The garbage does not magically disappear. We already know that much of the world’s biosphere, including us, is already contaminated with agricultural chemicals and all our petroleum products (plastics), etc.

That is a pretty disgusting and misguided quote! How could they actually think people will listen to their lies because they make no sense at all!. Do they really expect our fur families to eat garbage?

Have no idea why…but that statement in itself felt like special interest and money.I’m thinking any reasonable person who cares about this will see it’s absurdity for what it is.
Come on – almost implies feeding scraps of Cr$&$p to our pets or animals will help the environment.

I too am appalled. This is what I just sent to the WWF:
I am bewildered by this article and the lack of insight, especially by the WWF. It is not the idea of byproducts that are bad, it is the content of most of those byproducts.
It is the means by which those byproducts are gained. Diseased, dying for other ways than slaughter. Parts of bodies that have little to NO nutritional value included. Substandard quality!!
But, in the authors mind, so what? Don’t put it in the land fill. Feed it to the animals. Seriously???
Perhaps your acronym should be WTF.
I suppose that piling moldy, rotted piles of GMO corn out for deer to eat is acceptable also?
Who cares if the lakes and streams are polluted, as long as the animals can still get a drink from them.
So what if a species is depleted as long as there is one left?
Really, this is the face you want to present to the world?

Yeah, sure… better foods “…aren’t necessarily what Fido or Fluffy needs.” And byproducts are good for them and for us. I remember when Consumer Reports published a scolding article by a so-called veterinary expert that advocated for grocery store food over premium foods that avoided grains and byproducts.

My background includes many years in wildlife conservation and I’ve had many dealings with World Wildlife Fund, consequently I am not speaking my mind solely based on their pet food article, but rather from my extensive experience with this organization. WWF’s bottom line is money, and it has always been so. This organization talks the talk of wildlife conservation, but seldom (if ever) walks the walk. They spend vast amounts of money (that were donated to help wildlife) on glitzy marketing campaigns, but seldom do anything other than give lip service to an issue. I’ve seen countless email promotions from WWF offering plush toys in the form of whatever the endangered species of the month is; in return for the toy, the donor is expected to ask no questions, but simply trust WWF to “do the right thing” with their donation. In the meantime, the endangered species in question continues to be exploited or poached in alarming numbers and spirals its way to extinction while WWF pockets the proceeds. This organization lacks honesty, professionalism and credibility. They are irresponsible, and ignorant of issues and publish articles containing blatant misinformation; the pet food article is a perfect example. Over the years, I’ve read many so-called scientific reports by this group, and the obvious lack of knowledge displayed by their so-called “experts” was laughable.

It is indeed unfortunate that WWF has stuck its nose in where it doesn’t belong, i.e. into the pet food issue. Many pet owners these days are better informed and will know better than to listen to the rantings of any person or organization taking this erroneous stand against quality pet foods. However there are many others, less informed, who will believe what they read as they consider WWF to be a credible organization. Nothing could be further from the truth.

This has been an eye opener. Up until now I followed WWF, and thought highly of them. Your comment in particular sealed the deal on how I will now spread the word on their practices. And I thank you Susan to bringing this to light to inform us!

Even though this knowledge makes me want to bury my head into my hands, this doesn’t surprise me. This is the same organization that’s insisting that about 50,000 species per day is going extinct. (Never mind that they lack the data to submit this.)

On another note, I do agree that quality of the food matters. That could be the difference between having your beloved pet live a long life and having it euthanized at a young age. I also agree that our pets shouldn’t be used as a garbage disposal as though that’s an effective solution.